Business process management has become the primary strategic approach to managing business in the 21st century. The approach recognizes that the customer is the most important driver of business success and as a result the goal of business process management is to organize the business in the best way to deliver value to the customer.
Business process management is a system designed to organize the business around the central principle of delivering customer value. It is a systematic approach in making an organization’s workflow more effective, more efficient and more flexible to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Performance is viewed from a customer perspective and attention is focused on the chain of activities that create value. Business process management is argued to be more capable of change than a functionally focused, traditional hierarchical management approach.
Business process management works by involving a significant change in approach to traditional functional views of hierarchy and performance. A business process is an activity or set of activities that will accomplish a specific organizational goal. These ‘End-to-end’ processes are mapped across the organization and performance objectives, tools and measurements are aligned to those processes.
Process owners are given ultimate responsibility for the process and view performance horizontally across the organization. Managers would still continue to exist like in a hierarchical structure but their success is measured in relation to what they contribute to the value chain rather than their own internal targets. Also, Functional areas are built to enable smooth transitions along the value chain. These managers are required to understand the impact of their areas on the process flow and work cross functionally to optimize process performance. Activities are assessed based on what they add to the value chain and any activities which are not adding value are removed
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